Powering the moon: Designing a microgrid for future lunar base | Hacker News Reader

Powering the moon: Designing a microgrid for future lunar base

phys.org

51 pointsddtaylor40 comments

For anyone wanting to work on problems like these at commercial scale, check out Enphase[1]. We build real AC microgrids that perform realtime energy production and consumption calculations to enable true microgrid orchestration with or without the presence of the utility.

[1] https://enphase.com

I wish your site would list the local installers, instead of just demanding my phone number to hand out to 4 random installers that I can't research ahead of time.

That's hard to do without enabling the massive industry of low-brow leadgen companies to scrape data and make the spam problem even worse. But I hear you. I will look at it.

I'm going to be using your microinverters for my solar setup for that specific reason. (Finding an installer that knew about them was pretty hard though)

I have nothing to add, but I'm using IQ7+s on the roof. It's grid-tied, but they've consistently worked great, and Enlighten's API is shockingly (pun intended) nice to use.

Thanks. If you ever have thoughts on how to improve/grow the API, email me. jm [at] hnvr.com

When last I checked (and contacted support :)), there was no way to get per-panel generation data from the API. It's been, like, at least a year, but if it hasn't already been added, that'd be a thing I'd love to see so I can integrate it with the monitoring/alerting I already have setup.

Since per-panel data is available in the UI, it seems like information that Enlighten does track, it's just not made available via API.

I'm also an Enphase home solar user. I got an email shortly after installation that if I went a month without checking the app for my panels, I'd void my warrantee. This strikes me as a cheap way to get out of your obligations to a customer who's paid >$20,000 for the panels and associated installation.

The stated reason is that homeowners need to check the app to make sure there aren't any emergencies that need to be dealt with. But couldn't you check that yourself via the hardware that sends data to the app? And if that data gets cut off due to a hardware problem, couldn't you notify the owner via another channel -- like the email address you used to let me know about his policy after I've already purchased the system?

Hi Dan –– this is definitely not true. Enphase offers long-dated warranties of up to 25 years on its systems and equipment. This comes as the dividend of serious work on hardware and software quality.[1]

Opening an app certainly isn't necessary to maintain the warranty.

Someone from the company will reach out to you to clarify/remediate/collect more information.

[1] https://enphase.com/installers/resources/warranty

Perhaps I misunderstood this email from my installer, but it says:

"Please remember that in order to be compliant with your solar warranty or any guarantees, you must check up your system's monitoring at least once every 30 days and immediately let us know if you have any issues."

This was from Your Energy Solutions here in the SF bay area. Are they misrepresenting your warranty conditions?

How can they talk about lunar power without mentioning nuclear? It's dark for 14 days!

The level of complication to add nuclear to the moon would be an order of magnitude more challenging and very expensive.

Are you sure about that? Thermo-electric solutions are practically maintenance free, ultra-reliable, and mature technology.

Even using a simple Stirling enginelike in NASA's Kilopower [0] project isn't super challenging expensive compared to battery solutions or power relays (e.g. from the lunar south pole or satellites).

I see no reason why nuclear power wouldn't be a viable and very competitive (or even essential) part of lunar exploration.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilopower

They may be talking about political complications

We use RTGs now in space...

can they redirect the light beams using solar mirrors that orbit the moon somehow? kinda like a light redirection satellite? technically speaking if there is enough panels and enough wiring to build a grid it could work. the energy would just have to travel via cables once harvested

I wonder what would be better in that case, redirecting light around to the dark side of the moon, or satellites that collect light, convert it to electricity, then beam it down to the moon as microwaves.

Well they all also mention wind turbines..

https://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/selene-data-suggests-no-per...

> The area with the highest incidence of sunlight was 89% at the north pole, followed by 86% at the south pole, equating to 324 and 314 days of sunlight a year, respectively. There were also many areas around crater rims where the yearly percentage of sunlight was at least 80%. The existence of polar areas believed to be in permanent shadow was confirmed by the survey.

They'll be fine with some batteries, and the poles are already prime spots due to permanently shadowed craters holding ice.

Installing mission-critical equipment on a peak of eternal light could be risky.

Actually, no. (Well, everything on the Moon is risky, to some extent.) Placing it there protects it from the severe temperature swings between 120°C and -130°C you'd get in a day/night cycle.

(Or, put solar panels on various redundant high points; different bits of the poles get their 80% at different times. Run cables to the base.)

Good point about the temp swings. I just meant physically moving and installing the equipment plus running cables from the flat landing site up the slope.

I didn't read the whole thing (and my planetary physics is pretty basic), but how would one protect infrastructure from getting struck by small bodies (asteroids I guess?)? Or are they a much rarer occurrence than I thought (I'm basing this off the fact that the moon is famously full of craters, and we were taught that in school that the moon "protects" earth)!

I remember reading a (not so tongue in cheek) proposal for powering the moon on diesel. The justification was how complicated solar and storage would be given our current state of the art. Does anyone know the blog post I’m talking about? I can’t find it

My kneejerk reaction is that it doesn't seem wise to run your previous breathing gas through an ICE but surely its not as boneheaded as it seems at first glance?

I've wondered how heavy construction equipment would work. Bulldozers trailing thick power cables seems... problematic. Yes, I'm aware of huge draglines connected to power sources with cables, but they aren't very mobile and you don't need to worry about other equipment cutting the line. Don't think batteries would do, either. So, ICE with compressed oxygen?

I would think the weight of batteries would be helpful in the case of bulldozers, especially given the low g.

Well there's likely to be surplus rocket fuel available, either RP-1 (kerosene), methane, or liquid hydrogen, and LOX, so burning some in an (non-rocket) internal combustion engine is not so crazy. Fuel cells would be more efficient though.

Their line losses would be pretty low considering the temperatures!

I assume the Moon gets quite hot during the 14 day, uh, day?

It's as close to the sun as Earth, with no isolating cloud layer. Then again there is no greenhouse effect, so maybe pure intuition won't figure this out.

Talk about not thinking through my comment before posting it. ~ 106 C during the day oof thats hot. Line losses would be great at night however during peak solar production you probably need some kind of protection for the cabling (good thing its a short distance).

Having to plan the componentry for sure wild temperature swings - yikes.

Wouldn't it be sufficient to just use a simple sun shade? There's no atmosphere that could transfer the heat so my naive assumption would be that a simple sun shade would do the trick.

The moon's modified USB-C will be known as Luna-C.

One side of the connector will be permanently out of sight.

"Moon", "Earth" not "moon", "the moon", "earth" ;)

In 1969, Neil Armstrong landed on Moon?

Go Michigan Tech!

Good old Michigan Tech, where the odds are good but goods are odd.

Good old <local school>...

Good old punch cards. Betcha miss those, too, huh from when you learned programming in the 1960s?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com